In Pursuit of a New American Industrialism

Secondhand Smoke: It's Worse than Smoking!

Anti-smoking activism in Pennsylvania has finally turned the corner. The inevitable one between exaggeration and nonsense.

Yep. State Representative Peter J. Daley now wants to ban smoking in cars when children are present. That's controversial enough. But check out WHY he wants to do that, in his words:

"We know that secondhand smoke is worse than firsthand smoke," said Daley. "The studies are all in, and we really want to protect the health of our children."

Got that? Secondhand smoke is so bad, IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN ACTUALLY SMOKING. Weird. Because the person sitting next to the smoker obviously inhales less smoke. You know, some of that nasty tar and nicotine gets stuck in the smoker's lungs. And some of it drifts off into the atmosphere. But stop thinking so much. Thinking kills kids. Why do you hate kids so much?

Daley's absolutely ridiculous position has grabbed the attention of Dr. Michael Siegel, an anti-tobacco activist who is beginning to worry that his compatriots in "public health" have abandoned honesty in favor of fear-mongering. His response demolishes Daley's claim. Check it out.

Luckily for us, we have One of America's Great Newspapers in our midst--the kind of journalistic behemoth that will cast a skeptical eye on any and all science being used to curtail individual freedoms. The kind of watchdog that will actually dive in and read the reports to see what they actually say...

Oh, wait. I forgot. What we really have is the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board.

They write an awful lot about secondhand smoke. I eagerly await their take on Daley's position. And a broader report about how the public health science has been turned and spun to such a degree that an otherwise intelligent state representative could make such a fool of himself. I mean, how did things get exaggerated in this way? Is it possible that certain institutions are reporting these things uncritically? Are there respected outlets saying things like inhaling secondhand smoke amounts to "flirting with death?"

I am also still waiting for an indication of which Post-Gazette editors actually read the Surgeon General's recent report on SHS, and some direction on whether the report actually says what the executive summary says it says.

Ah, but that's all he-said-she-said. I don't expect any clarification anytime soon.

Go figure.

Fun Update: So the Post-Gazette is One of America's Great Newspapers. I wonder what that means for, say, the Washington Post? I'm not sure, but the latter paper did give a bit of column space to this guy, who has obviously been kissing the feet of Big Tobacco. I mean, he won't even admit that the science of secondhand smoke is settled, as the Post-Gazette has so often informed us. Take a look:

It has been fashionable to ignore the weakness of "the science" on secondhand smoke, perhaps in the belief that claiming "the science is settled" will lead to policies and public attitudes that will reduce the prevalence of smoking. But such a Faustian bargain is an ominous precedent in public health and political ethics. Consider how minimally such policies as smoking bans in bars and restaurants really reduce the prevalence of smoking, and yet how odious and socially unfair such prohibitions are.

By any sensible account, the anachronism of tobacco use should eventually vanish in an advancing civilization. Why must we promote this process under the tyranny of deception?

Presumably, we are grown-up people, with a civilized sense of fair play, and dedicated to disciplined and rational discourse. We are fortunate enough to live in a free country that is respectful of individual choices and rights, including the right to honest public policies. Still, while much is voiced about the merits of forceful advocacy, not enough is said about the fundamental requisite of advancing public health with sustainable evidence, rather than by dangerous, wanton conjectures.

Who is this degenerate, foot-kissing tobacco stooge? Here's his bio from the WaPo:

Gio Batta Gori, an epidemiologist and toxicologists, is a fellow of the Health Policy Center in Bethesda. He is a former deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention, and he received the U.S. Public Health Service Superior Service Award in 1976 for his efforts to define less hazardous cigarettes. Gori's article "The Surgeon General's Doctored Opinion" will appear in the spring issue of the Cato Institute's Regulation Magazine.

But hey, what would he know? He's hardly One of America's Great Newspapers. And one of America's Great Newspapers tells us that the science is settled. That the case is "indisputable." That's right. "indisputable." The second of these includes a link to the surgeon general's "indisputable" report.

Does the Post-Gazette have a science reporter? Perhaps the editors could assign that reporter to read the report. And, you know, report on it.

Because, ahem, a lot of realy smart people are disputing it.

Regardless of what you think about the science, the Post-Gazette's repeated claims that people who disagree with them are kissing feet and forcing people to flirt with death amount to shabby, shabby journalism.

THIS SECOND HAND SMOKING SHIT MAKES NO SCENCE TO ME AT ALL
I DONT SEE HOW IT IS WORST THAN ACTUAL SMOKE THATS IMPOSILE
WHEN THE SMOKER TAKES A HIT IT SHOULD DRAIN MOST OF THE TAR OUT OF THE SMOKE SO WHEN THEY BLOW THE SMOKE OUT NOT MUCH OF THE OTHERS PERSONS BREATHING INHALES MUCH SO IDK SUM1 EMAIL ME TO EXPLAIN

AND U KNOW WHAT WHEN U SMOKE WEED IT TAKES SEVEN SECONDS TO DRAIN ALL THE THC OUT OF THE SMOKE INTO THEIR LUNGS SO THERE MUST BE SOME SORT OF RESEMBLENCE OF THE TWO RIGHT???

you are a silly person. Are you 13? Please use correct grammar and punctuation in your posts, or at least raise your grammar to an understandable level. Not all of us use chat-speak, and you should be ashamed that you would write an entire paragraph in caps-lock and such shitty grammar. Does your post have more importance than mine? Grow up and get over it, look up the facts yourself you pretentious egghead.

Though repetition has little to do with "the truth," we're repeatedly told that there's "no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke."

OSHA begs to differ.

OSHA has established PELs (Permissible Exposure Levels) for all the measurable chemicals, including the 40 alleged carcinogens, in secondhand smoke. PELs are levels of exposure for an 8-hour workday from which, according to OSHA, no harm will result.

Of course the idea of "thousands of chemicals" can itself sound spooky. Perhaps it would help to note that coffee contains over 1000 chemicals, 19 of which are known to be rat carcinogens.
-"Rodent Carcinogens: Setting Priorities" Gold Et Al., Science, 258: 261-65 (1992)

There. Feel better?

As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that:

"Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded."
-Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec'y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997

Indeed it would.

Independent health researchers have done the chemistry and the math to prove how very very rare that would be.

As you're about to see in a moment.

In 1999, comments were solicited by the government from an independent Public and Health Policy Research group, Littlewood & Fennel of Austin, Tx, on the subject of secondhand smoke.

Using EPA figures on the emissions per cigarette of everything measurable in secondhand smoke, they compared them to OSHA's PELs.

The following excerpt and chart are directly from their report and their Washington testimony:

CALCULATING THE NON-EXISTENT RISKS OF ETS

"We have taken the substances for which measurements have actually been obtained--very few, of course, because it's difficult to even find these chemicals in diffuse and diluted ETS.

"Taking the figures for ETS yields per cigarette directly from the EPA, we calculated the number of cigarettes that would be required to reach the lowest published "danger" threshold for each of these substances. The results are actually quite amusing. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a situation where these threshold limits could be realized.

"Our chart (Table 1) illustrates each of these substances, but let me report some notable examples.

"For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes would be required to reach the lowest published "danger" threshold.

"At the lower end of the scale-- in the case of Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up simultaneously in our little room to reach the threshold at which they might begin to pose a danger.

"For Hydroquinone, "only" 1250 cigarettes are required. Perhaps we could post a notice limiting this 20-foot square room to 300 rather tightly-packed people smoking no more than 62 packs per hour?

"Of course the moment we introduce real world factors to the room -- a door, an open window or two, or a healthy level of mechanical air exchange (remember, the room we've been talking about is sealed) achieving these levels becomes even more implausible.

"It becomes increasingly clear to us that ETS is a political, rather than scientific, scapegoat."

Chart (Table 1)

-"Toxic Toxicology" Littlewood & Fennel

Coming at OSHA from quite a different angle is litigator (and how!) John Banzhaf, founder and president of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

Banzhaf is on record as wanting to remove healthy children from intact homes if one of their family smokes. He also favors national smoking bans both indoors and out throughout America, and has litigation kits for sale on how to get your landlord to evict your smoking neighbors.

Banzhaf originally wanted OSHA to ban smoking in all American workplaces.

It's not even that OSHA wasn't happy to play along; it's just that--darn it -- they couldn't find the real-world science to make it credible.

So Banzhaf sued them. Suing federal agencies to get them to do what you want is, alas, a new trick in the political deck of cards. But OSHA, at least apparently, hung tough.

In response to Banzhaf's law suit they said the best they could do would be to set some official standards for permissible levels of smoking in the workplace.

Scaring Banzhaf, and Glantz and the rest of them to death.

Permissible levels? No, no. That would mean that OSHA, officially, said that smoking was permitted. That in fact, there were levels (hard to exceed, as we hope we've already shown) that were generally safe.

This so frightened Banzhaf that he dropped the case. Here are excerpts from his press release:

"ASH has agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against OSHA...to avoid serious harm to the non-smokers rights movement from adverse action OSHA had threatened to take if forced by the suit to do it....developing some hypothetical [ASH's characterization] measurement of smoke pollution that might be a better remedy than prohibiting smoking....[T]his could seriously hurt efforts to pass non-smokers' rights legislation at the state and local level...

Another major threat was that, if the agency were forced by ASH's suit to promulgate a rule regulating workplace smoking, [it] would be likely to pass a weak one.... This weak rule in turn could preempt future and possibly even existing non-smokers rights laws-- a risk no one was willing to take.

As a result of ASH's dismissal of the suit, OSHA will now withdraw its rule-making proceedings but will do so without using any of the damaging [to Anti activists] language they had threatened to include."
-ASH Nixes OSHA Suit To Prevent Harm To Movement

Looking on the bright side, Banzhaf concludes:

"We might now be even more successful in persuading states and localities to ban smoking on their own, once they no longer have OSHA rule-making to hide behind."

Exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) is an unpleasant experience for many nonsmokers, and for decades was considered a nuisance. But the idea that it might actually cause disease in nonsmokers has been around only since the 1970s.

Recent surveys show more than 80 percent of Americans now believe secondhand smoke is harmful to nonsmokers.

Federal Government Reports

A 1972 U.S. surgeon general's report first addressed passive smoking as a possible threat to nonsmokers and called for an anti-smoking movement. The issue was addressed again in surgeon generals' reports in 1979, 1982, and 1984.

A 1986 surgeon general's report concluded involuntary smoking caused lung cancer, but it offered only weak epidemiological evidence to support the claim. In 1989 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was charged with further evaluating the evidence for health effects of SHS.

In 1992 EPA published its report, "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking," claiming SHS is a serious public health problem, that it kills approximately 3,000 nonsmoking Americans each year from lung cancer, and that it is a Group A carcinogen (like benzene, asbestos, and radon).

The report has been used by the tobacco-control movement and government agencies, including public health departments, to justify the imposition of thousands of indoor smoking bans in public places.

Flawed Assumptions

EPA's 1992 conclusions are not supported by reliable scientific evidence. The report has been largely discredited and, in 1998, was legally vacated by a federal judge.

Even so, the EPA report was cited in the surgeon general's 2006 report on SHS, where then-Surgeon General Richard Carmona made the absurd claim that there is no risk-free level of exposure to SHS.

For its 1992 report, EPA arbitrarily chose to equate SHS with mainstream (or firsthand) smoke. One of the agency's stated assumptions was that because there is an association between active smoking and lung cancer, there also must be a similar association between SHS and lung cancer.

But the problem posed by SHS is entirely different from that found with mainstream smoke. A well-recognized toxicological principle states, "The dose makes the poison."

Accordingly, we physicians record direct exposure to cigarette smoke by smokers in the medical record as "pack-years smoked" (packs smoked per day times the number of years smoked). A smoking history of around 10 pack-years alerts the physician to search for cigarette-caused illness. But even those nonsmokers with the greatest exposure to SHS probably inhale the equivalent of only a small fraction (around 0.03) of one cigarette per day, which is equivalent to smoking around 10 cigarettes per year.

Low Statistical Association

Another major problem is that the epidemiological studies on which the EPA report is based are statistical studies that can show only correlation and cannot prove causation.

One statistical method used to compare the rates of a disease in two populations is relative risk (RR). It is the rate of disease found in the exposed population divided by the rate found in the unexposed population. An RR of 1.0 represents zero increased risk. Because confounding and other factors can obscure a weak association, in order even to suggest causation a very strong association must be found, on the order of at least 300 percent to 400 percent, which is an RR of 3.0 to 4.0.

For example, the studies linking direct cigarette smoking with lung cancer found an incidence in smokers of 20 to around 40 times that in nonsmokers, an association of 2000 percent to 4000 percent, or an RR of 20.0 to 40.0.

Scientific Principles Ignored

An even greater problem is the agency's lowering of the confidence interval (CI) used in its report. Epidemiologists calculate confidence intervals to express the likelihood a result could happen just by chance. A CI of 95 percent allows a 5 percent possibility that the results occurred only by chance.

Before its 1992 report, EPA had always used epidemiology's gold standard CI of 95 percent to measure statistical significance. But because the U.S. studies chosen for the report were not statistically significant within a 95 percent CI, for the first time in its history EPA changed the rules and used a 90 percent CI, which doubled the chance of being wrong.

This allowed it to report a statistically significant 19 percent increase of lung cancer cases in the nonsmoking spouses of smokers over those cases found in nonsmoking spouses of nonsmokers. Even though the RR was only 1.19--an amount far short of what is normally required to demonstrate correlation or causality--the agency concluded this was proof SHS increased the risk of U.S. nonsmokers developing lung cancer by 19 percent.

EPA Study Soundly Rejected

In November 1995 after a 20-month study, the Congressional Research Service released a detailed analysis of the EPA report that was highly critical of EPA's methods and conclusions. In 1998, in a devastating 92-page opinion, Federal Judge William Osteen vacated the EPA study, declaring it null and void. He found a culture of arrogance, deception, and cover-up at the agency.

Osteen noted, "First, there is evidence in the record supporting the accusation that EPA 'cherry picked' its data. ... In order to confirm its hypothesis, EPA maintained its standard significance level but lowered the confidence interval to 90 percent. This allowed EPA to confirm its hypothesis by finding a relative risk of 1.19, albeit a very weak association. ... EPA cannot show a statistically significant association between [SHS] and lung cancer."

In 2003 a definitive paper on SHS and lung cancer mortality was published in the British Medical Journal. It is the largest and most detailed study ever reported. The authors studied more than 35,000 California never-smokers over a 39-year period and found no statistically significant association between exposure to SHS and lung cancer mortality.

Propaganda Trumps Science

The 1992 EPA report is an example of the use of epidemiology to promote belief in an epidemic instead of to investigate one. It has damaged the credibility of EPA and has tainted the fields of epidemiology and public health.

In addition, influential anti-tobacco activists, including prominent academics, have unethically attacked the research of eminent scientists in order to further their ideological and political agendas.

The abuse of scientific integrity and the generation of faulty "scientific" outcomes (through the use of pseudoscience) have led to the deception of the American public on a grand scale and to draconian government overregulation and the squandering of public money.

Millions of dollars have been spent promoting belief in SHS as a killer, and more millions of dollars have been spent by businesses in order to comply with thousands of highly restrictive bans, while personal choice and freedom have been denied to millions of smokers. Finally, and perhaps most tragically, all this has diverted resources away from discovering the true cause(s) of lung cancer in nonsmokers.

Dr. Jerome Arnett Jr. (jerry.arnett@gmail.com) is a pulmonologist who lives in Helvetia, West Virginia.

Air quality test results by Johns Hopkins University, the American Cancer Society, a Minnesota Environmental Health Department, and various researchers whose testing and report was peer reviewed and published in the esteemed British Medical Journal......prove that secondhand smoke is 2.6 - 25,000 times SAFER than occupational (OSHA) workplace regulations:

Wow!!! Excellent work I must say. Have you written this article for the first time? Or probably I may have read it for the first time. Whatever may be the case, all I wish to tell you is, that, you write too well man.

Smoking can damage your teeth, ruin your lungs, or even kill you. Oh wait. Not just you, but the people around you. You should think about that first. I was a smoker back when I was still living in Sevierville. What made me quit was when I paid a visit to the local dentist. He saw damages on my teeth, and he told me that it was because of my smoking. I told him that I'm prepared to pay for any cosmetic dentistry method that he can do just to fix my teeth. After that, I completely stopped.

you are an idiot. the smoke that the smoker inhales goes through a filter first but the smoke comming out of the other end - that helpless children and nonsmokers must inhale - has no filter and contains 3X as much cancer-causing benzpyrene, 5X as much carbon monoxide, and 50X as much ammonia. Secondhand smoke from pipes and cigars is equally as harmful, if not more so. Over the past two decades, medical research has shown that non-smokers suffer many of the diseases of active smoking when they breathe secondhand smoke.
Secondhand smoke causes lung cancer and contributes to the development of heart disease. Never smoking women who live with a smoker have a 91% greater risk of heart disease. They also have twice the risk of dying from lung cancer.
Never-smoking spouses who are exposed to secondhand smoke have about 20% higher death rates for both lung cancer and heart disease.
Secondhand smoke increases heart rate and shortens time to exhaustion. Repeated exposure causes thickening of the walls of the carotid arteries (accelerates atherosclerosis) and damages the lining of these arteries

I searched for this theme! Not all of us use chat-speak, and you should be ashamed that you would write an entire paragraph in caps-lock and such shitty grammar. Does your post have more importance than mine? Grow up and get over it, look up the facts yourself you pretentious egghead.

Always was interested in this theme! Taking the figures for ETS yields per cigarette directly from the EPA, we calculated the number of cigarettes that would be required to reach the lowest published "danger" threshold for each of these substances. The results are actually quite amusing. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a situation where these threshold limits could be realized.

This theme has interested me! Luckily for us, we have One of America's Great Newspapers in our midst--the kind of journalistic behemoth that will cast a skeptical eye on any and all science being used to curtail individual freedoms. The kind of watchdog that will actually dive in and read the reports to see what they actually say...